For five days pursuer and pursued drifted in calms. On the 19th a stiff westerly gale enabled Hawke to overtake Conflans, who was obliged to shorten sail for fear of arriving at his destination in the darkness. The morning of the 20th found the fleets in sight of each other but scattered. All the forenoon the rival admirals made efforts to gather their units for battle. A frigate leading the British pursuit fired signal guns to warn Duff of the enemy's presence, and the latter, cutting his cables, was barely able to get out in time to escape the French fleet and join Hawke. Conflans then decided that the English were too strong for him, and abandoning his idea of offering battle, signaled a general retreat and led the way into Quiberon Bay.
Hawke instantly ordered pursuit. The importance of this signal can be realized only by taking into account the tremendous gale blowing and the exceedingly dangerous character of the approach to Quiberon Bay, lined as it was with sunken rocks. Hawke had little knowledge of the channels but he reasoned that where a French ship could go an English one could follow, and the perils of the entry could not outweigh in his mind the importance of crushing the navy of France then and there. The small British superiority of numbers which Conflans feared was greatly aggravated by the conditions of his flight. The slower ships in his rear were crushed by the British in superior force and the English coming alongside the French on their lee side were able to use their heaviest batteries while the French, heeled over by the gale, had to keep their lowest tier of ports closed for fear of being sunk. One of their ships tried the experiment of opening this broadside and promptly foundered.
Darkness fell on a scene of wild confusion. Two of the British vessels were lost on a reef, but daylight revealed the fact that the French had scattered in all directions. Only five of their ships had been destroyed and one taken, but the organization and the morale were completely shattered. The idea of invasion thus came to a sudden end in Quiberon Bay. The daring and initiative of Hawke in defying weather and rocks in his pursuit of Conflans is the admirable and significant fact of this story, for the actual fighting amounted to little. It is the sort of thing that marked the spirit of the Dutch Wars and of Blake at Santa Cruz, and is strikingly different from the tame and stupid work of other admirals, English or French, in his own day.